What Happens When You Don’t Study Your Bible?

Driving home from work the other day I was tuned in to a local radio talk show that normally talks local politics and community events. Admittedly I started listening mid-conversation, but based on what I heard the context had to do with some comments that had been made recently by someone regarding gay marriage. That had prompted a man to call in and express his opinion, leading to the conversation I heard.

The man was an admitted skeptic. He said he didn’t know there was a God and didn’t believe he could be convinced there was one. That was disturbing, but not as disturbing as the attempt the host then made at trying to change his mind. What transpired from there was a series of incoherent and thoughtless arguments offered with the best intentions, but offered in vain. Never was a verse of the Bible actually brought into the discussion. Never was a truly logical statement made to confirm God’s existence. Never was much of anything said that indicated the host had spent much time actually sitting down and studying his Bible. And the result was obvious. The caller hung up satisfied in his unbelief.

God’s word is a powerful document. It’s living and active (Hebrews 4:12). It contains all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). It’s capable of changing our hearts and changing our lives (2 Timothy 3:16-17). But unless we commit ourselves to studying it, knowing it, and obeying it then it does none of these and is, practically speaking, worthless to us. Because when we don’t study our Bibles some pretty serious things happen.

You fail to change your own life. The gospel is God’s means of changing people (Romans 1:16). It can take us from being creatures of the flesh dead in sin to creatures of the Spirit made alive in Christ (Colossians 3:1-10). It teaches us how to put away the things of this world and truly love God (1 John 2:15-16). Anyone who has ever experienced that change in life did only because of the faith they developed by hearing (studying) the word of God (Romans 10:17). So if a person refuses to study their Bible there’s no way they can really change their life, at least not in any eternally meaningful way. Study your Bible so that you can change your life.

You are incapable of helping change other lives. The Great Commission tells us everything we need to know in about this – “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). But how can we possibly teach what we do not know? Don’t you think that might be why Peter told those 1^st century Christians that they needed to “be ready to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15)? How can we be ready? It’s going to take study; there simply is no other way. So if we want to be able to impact meaningful change in the lives of others then we better study our Bibles.

You are incapable of helping change the world’s attitude toward Christianity. More and more people are turning Christianity into a shallow religion. But no one is interested in a shallow religion except for shallow people. So when you take someone who claims to be a Christian but knows practically nothing about Christianity then that only confirms to the world their assumption of just how shallow Christianity is. But the thing is that Christianity is not a shallow religion. The Bible is not a shallow book. But when people who claim to love the Bible and who claim to live their lives according to the Bible know nothing about the Bible it makes Christianity seem shallow. Rise above that. Study your Bible so that you can effectively contend for the faith (Jude 3) and change the world’s attitude toward Christianity.

Bible study shouldn’t be arbitrary. In other words, we don’t study the Bible to just know the Bible. We’ve got to have a more purposeful approach to it than that. Whether we as God’s people know the Bible or not will impact us, it will impact those closest to us, and it will impact Christianity’s influence in society. And when you look at it that way it makes it a much bigger deal when you don’t study your Bible.

-Andy